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DEFICIENT   CHILDREN 

Being  an  application  of  the  binet 

scale  of  intelligence  to  the 

backward  children  in  the  bloom- 

ington.    indiana,    public    schools. 

SUBMITTED    AS     PART      REQUIREMENT     FOR 

DEGREE    OF    MASTER    OF    ARTS    IN 

THE     SCHOOL     OF    EDUCATION. 

INDIANA    UNIVERSITY 

19  14 


BY 

MAE  C.  TROVILLION 


With  Charts  and  Tables. 


HERRIN,    ILLINOIS 
THE     HERRIN       NEWS 
1914 


[•    > 


A^\ 


<  t 


.  .  . 

*  •  •  •  * 


TO 

ELMER   ELLSWORTH  JONES.    Ph.  D. 

UNDER  WHOSE  SCHOLARLY    GUIDANCE 
THIS  WORK  WAS  PREPARED 


INTRODUCTION. 

The  work  of  testing  the  defective 
children  of  the  Bloomington  graded 
schools  was  begun  in  January  1914 
and  was  completed  in  May  of  the 
same  year.  Out  of  the  total  number 
of  1778  school  children  286  were 
found  to  be  defective,  mentally.  The 
Binet-Simon  scale  was  used  in  the 
form  in  which  it  was  revised  by  Dr. 
Henry  H.  Goddard,  of  the  Training 
School  of  Vineland,  New  Jersey. 
From  the  teacher  of  each  room  was 
secured  a  list  of  the  children  whom 
she  found  to  be,  or  at  least  suspect- 
ed them  to  be,  subnormal  and  unable 
to  cope  with  the  intelligence  of  the 
average  child.  The  cloak  rooms  of 
the  different  buildings  were  turn- 
ed into  minature  clinics,  each  of 
which  was  fitted  up  with  a  table, 
two  chairs,  and  the  different  pieces 
of  apparatus  used    in    making     the 


tests.  As  soon  as  one  child  was  test- 
ed, he  was  asked  to  tell  the  next  child 
on  the  list  to  come  down  to  the  room. 
The  average  time  taken  to  test  the 
younger  children  was  twenty  minutes, 
and  usually  from  thirty  to  thirty- 
five  minutes  was  consumed  in  testing 
the  larger  ones. 

The  directions  for  giving  the  tests 
were  followed  as  closely  as  deemed 
necessary,  but  at  the  same  time  I 
used  my  own  judgment  as  to  the  exact 
method  of  procedure  with  each  indi- 
vidual child.  My  first  concern  with 
the  pupil  was  to  gain  his  or  her  con- 
fidence. This  kindly  and  friendly  re- 
lation once  established,  the  child  will 
give  you  any  amount  of  information 
you  wish, — that  is,  the  majority  will 
re-act  in  this  way.  The  average 
child  is  anxious  and  glad  to  tell  you 
everything  about  himself,  his  father, 
his  mother,  his  brothers,  sisters,  dog, 
or  anything  else,  providing  you  first 
gain  his  confidence  and  can  make 
him  feel  that  it  is  he,  more  than  any 
one  else  in  whom  you  are  most  in- 
terested at  that  particularly  moment. 

II 


One  correction  should  be  made  in 
this  introduction  concerning  the 
children  who  were  over  fifteen  years 
of  age.  The  records  which  were 
taken  of  this  group  are  of  course  in- 
accurate. For,  if  a  boy  is  sixteen 
years  old  and  is  tested  only  through 
the  fifteenth  year,  he  is  bound  to  fall 
behind  his  age  one  year,  at  least.  This 
method  of  grading  is  decidedly  unfair 
to  the  child  and  tor  that  reason  none 
of  the  Eighth  A  grade  was  tested,  ex- 
cept those  of  the  colored  school. 

Another  point  which  should  oe  ex- 
plained with  regard  to  my  method  of 
grading  in  the  tests  is  concerning  the 
gap  in  the  scale  between  the  twelfth 
and  fifteenth  years.  The  question  is, 
how  to  grade  the  child  who  is  four- 
teen years  old.  There  is  no  test  for 
children  of  this  age  and  yet,  it  would 
be  unfair  to  give  them  the  fifteen- 
year-old  test.  So,  I  used  my  own 
methods  in  these  particular  cases. 
The  rule  is,  after  you  have  counted 
up  and  decided  on  the  mental  age, 
then  advance  him  one  year  for  every 
five  higher  tests  he  has  answered  cor- 

III 


rectly,  and  two  years  for  every  ten 
tests.  Since,  Binet  says,  there  is  so 
little  difference  in  the  child  from  the 
age  of  twelve  to  fifteen  years,  no 
tests  have  been  made  for  the  two 
years  thirteen  and  fourteen.  So  it 
seems  reasonable  that  if  the  four- 
teen-year-old-child could  answer  three 
of  the  twelve-year-old  questions,  then 
he  could  probably  answer  three  in  the 
thirteen,  and  three  in  the  fourteen- 
year-old,  providing  such  tests  were 
made.  This  is  all  theory,  01  course, 
and  since  we  do  not  have  these  tests 
to  present  to  the  child,  we  can  not  tell 
by  actual  experiment  whether  this 
is  true  or  not.  Throughout  my  rec- 
ords, this  method  was  employed  in 
scoring  the  tests. 

It  is  best  always  to  begin  the 
tests  at  least  two  years  behind  the 
chronological  age  of  the  child.  These 
questions  are  easier  for  hirn  and  if  he 
starts  out  by  answering  fairly  well, 
it  encourages  him  and  helps  him  in 
the  later  tests.  Under  no  considera- 
tion must  defective  children  know 
that  they  have  failed  in  a  test.  They 
IV 


are  more  easily  discouraged  than 
normal  children  and  are  extremely 
sensitive.  On  the  other  hand,  they 
are  so  susceptible  to  flattery  that 
the  more  praise  is  given  to  children 
of  this  type  the  better  the  results. 
Mae  C.  Trovillion. 
University  of  Indiana,  1914. 


I. 

LITERATURE. 

Next  to  the  exceedingly  bad  and  in- 
corrigible boy  in  the  public  school 
perhaps  the  greatest  menace  to  the 
general  school  is  the  mentally-defect- 
ive child.  He  is  not  able  in  any 
way  to  cope  with  the  standards  of 
the  school,  although  he  has  been  in 
the  same  grade  for  several  years. 

A  few  of  our  feeble-minded  chil- 
dren might  be  passed,  at  a  glance, 
for  normal  children,  but  the  greater 
number  presents  unmistakable  ano- 
malies of  bodily  structure  and  func- 
tion as  well  as  having  some  mental 
defect.  Investigations  concerning 
these  children  usually  show  that  they 
were  slow  about  learning  to  talk,  and 
the  result  is  that  they  are  unable 
to  articulate  well  yet;  consequently 
they  are  speech  defectives.  It  will  be 
found  often  that  dentition,  standing, 
and  walking  have  also  been  abnorm- 

6 


ally  delayed.  The  co-ordination  of 
their  muscles  is  poor;  they  are 
clumsy  in  their  movements,  and  are 
not  able  to  run,  jump,  and  play  as  the 
ordinary  child  plays.  They  are  the 
children  with  few  perceptions;  their 
faculty  of  observation,  attention, 
and  curiosity,  are  faulty,  and  the  re- 
sult is  that  the  development  of  their 
sensorium  must  be  looked  after  with 
special  care. 

Children  of  this  type  follow  the 
crowd.  They  all  lack  confidence  in 
themselves.  They  follow  along  the 
line  of  least  resistance, — always  imi- 
tating others,  but  never  originating 
anything  for  themselves.  They  lack 
initiative,  are  afraid  to  venture  out, 
and  as  a  consequence  they  remain 
always  in  the  same  rut. 

The  Binet-Simon  tests  proved  that 
the  percentage  of  feeble-minded 
children  was  rather  high,  compared 
with  Goddard's  conclusions.  He  states 
ithat  from  one  to  two  per  cent, 
of  all  school  children  belong  in    the 

1  Boston,  N.  E.  A.,  1910,  What  can  the  pub- 
lic school  do  for  the  subnormal?~Goddard. 


class  of  the  feeble-minded.  Out  of 
the  1778  graded  school  children  five 
and  two-tenths  per  cent,  were  found 
to  be  feeble-minded,  according  to 
the  standard  which  considers  chil- 
dren that  are  retarded  three  or  more 
years  in  this  group. 

The  majority  of  the  backward 
children  in  the  Bloomington  schools 
came  in  the  class  retarded  one  and 
two  years.  Ten  and  two-tenths  per 
cent,  of  the  entire  grades  were  class- 
ed in  this  group.  This  class  consists 
01  children  who  are  mentally  super- 
ior to  the  feeble-minded.  They  are 
the  ones  who  are  in  that  great  group 
of  people  who  are  exceedingly  slow 
of  comprehension.  It  usually  takes 
them  twice  as  long  to  do  their  work 
as  it  does  a  normal  person,  and  we 
find  them  dropping  behind,  becom- 
ing discouraged,  and  finally,  giving 
up  entirely. 

The  Binet-Simon  Scale. 

There  has  been,  perhaps,  no  scale 

of  tests   for  the  measurement      of 

of  intelligence  that  has  received    as 

world-wide  praise  and  fame  as  have 

8 


the  tests  worked  out  by  Binet    and 
Simon,  the  two  Frenchmen. 

In  the  L'Annee  Psychologique  for 
1903,  Prof.  Binet  published  a  scale 
consisting  of  thirty  tests,  which  were 
arranged  in  order  of  difficulty.  In 
the  1908  Psychologique  there  appear- 
ed a  revised  scale  by  Binet  and 
Simon.  It  was  in  this  scale  that 
educators  throughout  the  world  be- 
came interested.  It  was  tried  by 
them  on  both  normal  and  defective 
children  over  the  country,  and  was 
found  to  be  extremely  valuable  to 
teachers,  physicians,  and  psycholo- 
gists, in  aiding  them  to  judge  the 
mental  age  of  a  child.  The  two  men 
revised  the  scale  again  in  1911,  and 
in  the  same  year  Dr.  Henry  H.  God- 
dard,  of  the  Training  School  of  Vine- 
land,  New  Jersey,  also  revised  this 
scale,  giving  but  five  questions 
to  each  year,  excepting  those 
of  the  fourth  and  fifteenth  years,  and 
changing  some  of  the  tests  to  a  high- 
er or  lower  grade,  as  he  saw  fit.  In 
1909,  Dr.  Edward  B.  Huey  tested  the 
defective  children  of  Lincoln,  Illi- 
9 


nois,  in  the  state  institution,  also  at 
the  Johns  Hopkins  Dispensary. 

Louis  M.  Terman,  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity, in  California,  tested  about 
four  hundred  non-selected  children 
by  the  Binet  scale.  His  conclusions, 
after  the  examinations,  was  that  a 
measuring  scale  of  this  general  type 
was  feasible,  and  that  "when  cor- 
rected, extended,  and  multiplied, 
they  will  prove  of  great  practical  and 
theoretical  value." i 

In  1911,  Isabel  Lawrence  of  uie 
State  Normal  School  at  St.  Cloud, 
Minnesota,  experimented  with  the 
definition  tests  of  the  Binet-Simon 
scale,  by  testing  seven  hundred  and 
forty-eight  children,  in  the  elemen- 
tary schools  in  St.  Cloud;  and  aft- 
erward, by  comparing  her  results 
with  the  teachers'  estimation  of  the 
pupils'  ability  in  class.  The  defini- 
tions were  those  superior  to  use, — 
were  such  as  required  maturity  of  in- 
tellect. Since  there  were  no  defi- 
nitions for  the  ages  of  seven,  ten, 
twelve,  fourteen,     and     older,      the 

1.     Psychological  Clinic,  Dec.  15,  1911. 

10 


eleven-year-old  child  was  marked  re- 
eled only  one  year,  if  he  failed  in 
the  eleven-year-old  tests,  but  passed 
the  nine-year-old  test.  He  probably 
would  have  passed  on  the  ten-year- 
old,  if  there  had  been  any  definitions 
in  the  tests  for  that  year. 

The  results  from  the  Binet  tests 
corresponded  favorably  with  the 
teachers'  estimate  of  the  pupils.  In 
other  words,  the  child  who  was  mark- 
ed "very  poor"  by  the  teacher  also 
measured  "very  poor"  in  the  tests, 
which  meant  that  he  was  retarded 
two  or  three  years.  And  those  pu- 
pils who  were  marked  "very  good" 
or  "excellent"  by  the  instructor, 
measured  exactly  up  to  their  age, 
or  a  year  or  so  in  advance  of  their 
biological  age  in  the  scale. 

Miss  Lawrence  States  i  that  this  is 
only  a  crude  way  of  deciding  the 
psychological  age  of  the  child,  but 
it  does  show,  concerning  the  ex 
ceptional  children,  that  but  few  of 
this  class  are  to  be  found  in      ex- 


1.     Psychological    Clinic.     Dec.     1911:     Study  of 
the  Binet  Definition  Tests,  by  Isabel    Lawrence. 

11 


ceptional  grades  for  their  age,  ana 
she  suggests  as  a  reason  for  this  that 
the  teachers  are  unwilling  to  put  a 
child  either  back  or  in  advance  of 
the  usual  grade  for  his  age. 

Kuhlman,  the  psychologist,  high- 
ly praises  the  tests  and  he  found  them 
to  be  of  great  benefit  and  use  to 
him  at  the  Minnesota  State  Institu- 
tion for  the  feeble  minded. 

Decroly  and  Degand  used  the  1908 
Binet-Simon  scale  in  testing  forty- 
three  normal  ooys  and  girls  in  a  pri- 
vate school  in  Brussels.  All  of  the 
children  were  of  the  upper-class  in 
the  city.  It  was  found  from  the  re- 
sults obtained  that  the  Belgium  chil- 
dren ranked  higher  than  did  those  of 
Paris,  which  Binet  says  shows  the  dif- 
ference in  the  intelligence-level  and  in 
language  between  children  of  the  poor 
and  of  the  rich. 

The  scale  which  was  used  in  the 
testing  pf  the  286  children  in  the 
Bloomington  graded  schools,  was 
that  revised  by  Dr.  Goddard  in  1911. 
It  seems  to  be  more  suited  to  the 
American  child  than  the  one  which 
12 


Binet  first  made.  Goddard  and  his 
corps  of  workers  in  the  Vineland 
schools  have  tested  four  hundred 
feeble  minded  children  and  nearly 
two  thousand  normal  children.  So 
the  strong  and  weak  points  in 
his  revision  should  be  pretty  clearly 
seen  by  this  time. 

The  three  main  results  which  are 
obtained  by  the  use  of  the  scale  are 
as  follows  i  "(1)  The  child's  intel- 
lectual level  is  measured.  (2)  Cer- 
tain important  practical  data  are  ob- 
tained concerning  the  child's  ability 
to  read,  write,  draw,  use  language, 
use  numbers,  use  money,  do  errands, 
imitate,  etc.  (3)  The  tests  open  up 
the  case  for  varied  observation,  giv- 
ing the  examiner  opportunity  to 
make  supplementary  notes  of  the 
child's  attitude,  his  emotional  con- 
dition, his  speech,  his  movements, 
and  various  other  characteristics  of 
his  responses  and  conduct." 

The  simplicity  of  the  method  ap- 
peals to  those  who  are  not  well  train- 

1.     Backward    and    Feeble    Minded    Children.— 
Huey. 

13 


ed  in  psychological  methods.  But 
the  fact  that  it  is  so  simple  does 
not  make  possible  successful  tests  by 
everyone  who  tries  it. 

Binet  saysi  concerning  this 
point:  "It  is  not,  in  spite  of  ap- 
pearances, an  automatic  method, 
comparable  to  a  scale  which,  when 
one  stands  upon  it,  throws  out  a 
ticket  on  which  one's  weight  is 
printed.  It  is  not  a  mechanical 
method,  and  we  predict  for  the  busy 
physician  who  wishes  to  apply  it  in 
hospitals,  that  he  will  meet  with  dis- 
appointments. The  results  of  our  ex- 
aminations are  of  no  value  if  they 
are  separated  from  all  commentary. 
An  interpretation  is  necessary.  We 
are  aware  that  in  stating  this  neces- 
sity, we  apparently  open  the  door  to 
the  arbitrary  and  deprive  our  method 
of  all  precision,  but  this  is  only  ap- 
parent. Our  scale  will  always  be  su- 
perior to  the  ordinary  school  ex 
amination  because  it  has  several  ad- 
vantages over  them,  it  is  evolved  ac- 

1.  Bulletin  de  la  Societe  Libre  pour  1'  Etude 
Psychologique  de  1'  Enfant,  April,  1911. 

14 


cording  to  an  invariable  plan,  it 
takes  the  age  into  express  account, 
and  it  notes  the  answers  and  com- 
pares them  with  a  norm  which  is  a 
true  mean.  If,  in  spite  01  all  this  pre- 
cision, we  recognize  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  use  the  scale  with  intelligence, 
we  do  not  consider  its  value  dimin- 
ished by  this  reservation.  The  mi- 
croscope and  the  graphic  method  are 
admirable  methods  of  precision,  but 
what  intelligence,  circumspection, 
erudition,  and  art,  are  essential  to 
the  practice  of  these  methods!  Inl- 
ine the  value  of  observations  made 
with  the  microscope  by  an  ignor- 
amus who  is  scarcely  better  than  an 
imbecile.  We  have  seen  examples 
which  caused  a  shudder."  He  goes 
on  to  say  that  the  examination  must 
be  done  by  an  intelligent  hand,  and 
that  the  methods  cannot  be  made  pre- 
cise enough  to  be  trusted  to  every 
one.  He  says  that  if  the  method  is 
to  have  any  scientific  value,  the  ex- 
aminer must  have  had  an  apprentice- 
ship in  a  laboratory  of  pedagogy  or 


15 


must  possess  a  practical  knowledge 
of  psychological  experimentation. 

The  scale  is  by  no  means  yet  com- 
plete. It  is  still  in  the  experimental 
stage.  From  the  fact  that  the  experi- 
menters who  have  used  the  scale  in 
Belgium,  France,  Germany,  Eng- 
land, and  in  the  United  States,  are 
disagreeing  as  to  their  conclusions, 
it  seems  that  the  tests  will  necessarily 
have  to  be  different  for  each  coun- 
try. It  remains  for  an  educator  and 
experimenter  of  each  country  to  es- 
tablish forms  for  his  particular  coun- 
try. "It  is  questionable  whether  we 
can  calibrate  and  improve  the  scale 
by  confining  the  testing  to  a  very 
limited  range  of  years.  The  fur- 
ther improvement  of  the  scale,  we 
may  add,  requires  the  transposition 
of  certain  tests,  the  elimination  of 
certain  others  which  seem  valueless, 
the  equalization  of  the  number  of 
each  age,  or  the  proper  differential 
adjustment  of  the  system  of  accredit- 
ing points  and  the  increase  rather 
than  the  decrease  of  the  number  of 
tests  for  each  age.  *  *  *  *  We  need  to 
16 


probe  for  a  considerable  number  of 
traits  and  capacities  *  *  *  *  if  we 
would  arrive  at  a  true  clinical  pic- 
ture of  the  child  or  a  correct  classi- 
fication.   We  cannot    hope    to   diag- 

c  or  to  grade  accurately  if  we 
test  only  a  few  capacities,  or  if  we 
base  our  judgment  on  only  a  few 
symptoms.  The  element  in  variation 
in  human  traits  is  too  large.  What  is 
well-balanced,  comprehen- 
y  of  the  fundamental  hu- 
man capacities"* 

a  seems  to  be  a  general  criti- 

m  of  the  Binet-Simon  scale.  The 
tests  do  not  tell  one  enough  about 
the  child.  We  are  able  to  tell  how 
old  the  chiid  is  mentally  but  the  scale 
does  not  state  just  what  is  the  trou- 
ble with  turn.  It  should  be  so  ex- 
tended that  the  examiner  could  have 
a  chance  to  see  wherein  the  subject 
is  lacking.  In  the  use  of  the  present 
meager  scale  one  has  no  way  of  tell- 
ing very  much  about  the  physical 
condition  oi  the  subject.     There  are 

1.     Experimental  Studies  of    Mental    Defectives. 
Pages  55-56.     J.  E.  W.  Wallin. 

17 


no  tests  to  show  the  co-ordination  of 
his  muscles,  or  his  actual  ability  to 
construct  things  with  his  hands.  Nor 
is  there  any  chance  to  get  a  line  on 
his  senses. 

However  the  method  has  many 
good  points  which  should  not  be 
overlooked.  For  instance  the  ap- 
paratus that  is  required  is  very  sim- 
ple and  very  handy  to  carry  around 
with  one.  It  is  also  very  inexpensive, 
as  it  can  be  prepared  by  anyone  who 
understands  the  tests  and  has  a  man- 
ual to  follow.  It  now  remains  for  the 
psychological  and  educational  stu 
dents  to  revise  and  standardize  the 
scale  so  as  to  make  it  a  practical 
measuring  rod  for  the  classification 
of  all  children. 

The  following  are  the  tests  as  they 
have  been  revised  by  Dr.  Goddard: 
Children  of  Three  Years. 

1.  Where  is     your     nose,     your 
eyes,  your  mouth? 

2.  Repetition  of  sentences  of  six 
syllables.  It  rains.  I  am  hungry. 

3.  Repetition  of  figures.  "6-4." 

4.  Describing  pictures. 

18 


5.     Name  of  the  family. 
Children  of  Four  Years. 

1.  Sex  of  child.  Are  you  a  little 
girl  or  little  boy? 

2.  Naming  familiar  objects;  as 
key,  knife,  and  a  penny. 

3.  Repetition  of  three  figures,  as, 
7,  2,  9. 

4.  Comparison  of  two  lines. 
"Which  is  the  Longer  Line?"' 

Children  of  Five  Years. 

1.  Comparison  of  two  weights. 
"Which  is  the  Heavier?" 

2.  Copying  a  square. 

3.  Repeats  a  sentence  of  10  syl- 
lables. "His  name  is  John.  He  is 
a  very  good  boy." 

4.  Counting  four  pennies. 

5.  Game  of  patience  with  two 
pieces. 

Children  of  Six  Years. 

1.  Distinction  between  morning 
and  afternoon.  "Is  this  morning  or  is 
it  afternoon?" 

2.  Definition  of  known  objects. 
"What  is  a  fork,  a  table,  a  chair,  a 
horse,  a  mama?" 

3.  Execution  of     three     simulta- 

19 


neous  commissions.  "Do  you  see  this 
key?  Put  it  on  that  chair.  Then  shut 
the  door.  After  that  bring  me  the 
box  that  is  on  the  chair.  Remember, 
first  put  the  key  on  the  chair,  then 
close  the  door,  then  bring  the  box.  Do 
you  understand?  Well,  then,  go 
ahead." 

4.  Right  hand.  Left  ear. 

5.  Aesthetic  comparison.  "Which 
is  the  prettier?" 

Children  of  Seven  Years. 

1.  Counting  thirteen  pennies. 

2.  Description  of  pictures. 

3.  Unfinished  pictures.  "What  is 
lacking  in  that  picture?'* 

4.  Copying  a  diamond. 

5.  Name  four  colors. 
Children  of  Eight  Years. 

1.  Compare  two  things  from 
memory.  "What  is  the  difference 
between  a  butterfly  and  a  fly/' 
"wood  and  glass,"  "paper  and 
cloth?" 

2.  Count  backwards  from  20  to 
1. 

3.  Days  of  the  week. 

4.  Count  three  one-cent  and  three 

20 


two-cent  stamps.     "How    much    are 
they  worth?" 

5.  Repetition  of  five  figures.  "4, 
7,  3,  9,  5." 

Children  of  Nine  Years. 

1.  Make  change.  9  cents  out  of 
25. 

2.  Definitions  better  than  by 
"use." 

3.  Name  the  day  of  the  week,  the 
month,  the  day  of  the  month,  and  the 
year. 

4.  The  months  of  the  year. 

5.  Arrangement  of  weights. 
Children  of  Ten  Years. 

1.  Naming  nine  pieces  of  money. 
One  may  use  cent,  nickel,  dime,  quar- 
ter, half  dollar,  dollar,  five  dollars, 
and  ten  dollars. 

2.  Draw  design  from  memory. 

3.  Repeats  six  figures. 

4.  Questions   of  comprehension. 

5.  Using  three  words  in  a  sen- 
tence, Philadelphia,  money,  river. 

Children  of  Eleven  Years. 

1.  Criticism  of  sentences. 

2.  Three  words  in  a  sentence. 
(Given  under  age  ten.) 

21 


3.  Sixty  words  in  three  minutes. 
"Say  as  many  words  as  you  can 
think  of  in  three  minutes" 

4.  Rhymes.  (With  day,  spring, 
and  mill.) 

5.  Words  to  put  in  order.  "Make 
a  sentence  out  of  these  words." 
Started,  the,  for,  an,  early  hour,  we, 
country,  at. 

Asked,  paper,  the,  to,  I,  teacher, 
correct,  my. 

A,  defends,  dog,  good,  his,  master, 
bravely. 

Children  of  Twelve  Years. 

1.  Repetition  of  seven  figures.  2, 
9,  4,  6,  3,  7,  5.  1,  6,  9,  5,  8,  4,  7. 
9,  2,  8,  5,  1,  6,  4. 

2.  Abstract  definitions.  "What  is 
charity,  justice,  goodness?" 

3.  Repetition  of  a  sentence  of  26 
syllables.  "I  saw  in  the  street  a  pret- 
ty little  dog.  He  had  curly  brown 
hair,  short  legs,  and  a  long  tail." 

4.  Resists  suggestion. 

5.  Problem  of  various  facts. 
(What  is  it?) 

(1)    "A  person  who  was  walking 
in  the  forest  suddenly  stopped  much 
22 


frightened  and  hastened  to  the  near- 
est police  and  reported  that  he  had 
seen  hanging  from  a  limb  of  a  tree 

a ."   (After  a  pause.)   "What?" 

(2)  "My  neighbor  has  been  hav- 
ing strange  visitors.  He  has  receiv- 
ed one  after  the  other,  a  physician,  a 
lawyer,  and  a  clergyman.  What  has 
happened  at  the  house  of  my 
neighbor?" 

Children  of  Fifteen  Years. 

1.  Interprets  picture. 

2.  Change  hands  of  the  clock. 

3.  Code. 

4.  Opposition. 


II. 

CLASSIFICATION       OF       BACK- 
WARD  CHILDREN. 

There  have  been  a  great  many 
classifications  made  by  different 
authors  and  experimenters  of  back- 
ward and  deficient  children,  but  I 
intend  in  this  chapter  to  make  a 
classification  based  upon  my  own  ob- 
servations in  the  testing  of  these  286 
children.  They  seem  to  fall  into 
three  groups, — those  with  (1)  de- 
fective vision  and  those  who  are 
defective  in  (2)  reasoning,  and  (3) 
in  memory.  These  are  not  wholly 
separate  and  distinct  groups.  De- 
fective senses  may  be  and  often  are 
direct  causes  of  the  retardation  of 
the  child  in  many  lines.  The  fact 
that  mental  deficiency  is  really  a 
pathological  condition  which  is  pro- 
duced by  diseases,  is  well  established 
and  noted  by  all  observers  and  edu- 
cators all  along  this  special  line. 
24 


Defective  vision  was  very  notice- 
able in  the  retarded  children  that 
were  tested.  Tredgold  saysi  that 
ill  teen  per  cent,  of  the  feeble-mind- 
ed children  have  defective  vision.  In 
Elmira,  N.  Y.,  out  of  the  449  chil- 
dren examined,  twenty-two  per  cent, 
had  defective  eyes.  Concerning  this, 
D.  C.  Bliss  in  his  articles  on  "Re- 
lation of  Physical  Defects  to  Retard- 
ation in  Elmira,  N.  Y.,"  says:  "It 
has  been  found  in  Elmira  that  with 
these  children  there  is  a  definite  in- 
crease of  percentage  of  those  with 
eye-trouble  as  the  number  of  years 
required  to  complete  the  grade  in- 
creases." His  table  shows  that  of  345 
pupils  who  were  retarded  two  years 
twenty-one  per  cent,  had  defective 
eye  sight.  Twenty-four  per  cent,  of 
the  86  children  retarded  three  years, 
and  twenty-six  per  cent,  of  the  15 
who  were  retarded  four  years  were 
found  to  have  defective  vision. 

About  ten  per  cent,  of  the  Bloom- 
ington  defective  children,  as    far  as 

1.  Mental      Deficiency:      Chapter    on    "Feeble 
Mindedness  in  Children."  Page,     131.     Tredgold. 

2.  Psychological  Clinic.  May  1,  1911. 

25 


could  be  gathered  from  observations 
and  from  questioning,  had  bad  eyes. 
The  greater  number  of  children  who 
were  tested  were  of  an  inferior  class 
of  people.  They  came,  mostly,  from 
homes,  where  the  child's  physical  de- 
fects had  received  no  attention  and 
the  parents  were  ignorant  as  to  the 
bad  results  that  might  tiome  fron\ 
such  physical  abnormalities,  and  in 
many  cases  were  unable  financially 
to  consult  a  physician.  So,  chil- 
dren came  to  oe  tested  whose  eyes 
were  apparently  in  good  condition, 
but  upon  close  observation  their  de- 
fective vision  could  be  detected  by 
the  manner  in  which  they  bent  down 
over  the  paper  and  strained  their 
eyes,  when  taking  those  tests  which 
required  drawing  of  designs, 
squares,  diamonds,  etc. 

Reasoning. — A  child  who  is  retard- 
ed mentally  has  not  the  ability  to  rea- 
son as  does  the  healthy  normal  child. 
He  does  not  seem  to  be  able  to  ap- 
ply his  very  limited  knowledge  to 
any  new  circumstances  ,and  conse- 
quently, goes  on  from  day  to  day  in 
26 


the  same  rut.  When  any  new  cir- 
cumstance is  presented,  he  is  with- 
out resources  and  is  incapable  of 
reasoning  out  and  solving  a  solution 
to  the  problem. 

There  are  four  tests  in  the  Binet 
scale  which  require  reasoning  on  the 
part  of  the  child.  The  first  one  is 
question  number  four  in  year  eight. 
The  child  is  asked  to  tell  how  much 
three  one-cent  stamps  and  three  two- 
cent  stamps  will  cost.  Of  the  thir- 
teen eight  year-old  pupils  to  whom 
Ehia  test  was  given,  only  four  were 
able  to  reason  out  the  problem,  and 
nine  gave  it  up  as  hopeless.  Test  one, 
in  year  nine,  requires  some  reason- 
ing, as  for  example,  that  of  chang- 
ing money,  twenty-five  cents  and 
nine  cents.  The  examiner  plays 
store  with  the  subject,  buying  some- 
thing from  him  that  costs  nine 
cents,  but  gives  him  a  quarter.  The 
subject  must  then  give  back  the  right 
change.  For  the  deficient  child,  this 
bit  of  reasoning  involves  activities  of 
a  somewhat  higher  order  than  any  of 
which  he  has  yet  come  in  contact. 
27 


Quite  frequently,  the  children  count- 
ed out  and  gave  me  twenty-five  cents 
in  change  instead  of  sixteen  cents. 
Twenty-one  of  the  twenty-six  nine- 
year-olds  failed  in  this  as  did  also 
twenty-five  of  the  forty-one  ten-year- 
olds.  The  fifth  test  in  year  twelve 
reads,  "A  person  who  was  walking 
in  a  forest  suddenly  stopped,  much 
frightened,  and  hastened  to  the  near- 
est police  and  reported  that  he  had 
seen  hanging  from  the  limb  of  a  tree 

a ."    (After   a   pause)    "What?" 

The  child  all  this  time  is  quite  ex- 
cited, but  he  is  not  quite  capable 
of  filling  out  the  blank.  He  reasons 
merely  from  his  own  standpoint. 
What  sort  of  a  thing  hanging  from 
the  limb  of  a  tree  would  he  be  afraid 
of?  The  answer  usually  was  a  snake 
or  a  big  bear.  Few  think  it  is  a  dead 
man  hanging  there.  Likewise  in  the 
next  one,  "My  neighbor  has  been 
having  strange  visitors.  He  has  re- 
ceived one  after  the  other  a  physic- 
ian, a  lawyer,  and  a  clergyman.  What 
has  happened     at  the  house     of  my 


28 


neighbor?"  They  know  why  the 
physician  comes,  but  they  ponder  as 
to  why  the  lawyer  and  minister  were 
there.  The  reason  for  so  many  fail- 
ing on  these  two  problems  may  not 
be  due  solely  to  a  lack  of  reasoning 
power,  but  it  may  depend  more  on  a 
lack  of  the  general  worldly  knowl- 
edge. He  may  be  ignorant  as  to  just 
what  a  will  is  or  what  connection 
there  is  between  a  lawyer  and  a  will. 
But  a  normal  twelve-year-old  child 
should  have  some  conception  of  these 
points.  However,  not  one  twelve- 
year-old  was  able  to  answer  both 
of  the  questions  correctly.  Nineteen 
out  of  the  twenty-three  thirteen- 
year-old  children  missed  them,  as  did 
the  fourteen  of  the  seventeen  who 
were  fourteen  years  old. 

Very  few  children  were  able  to 
answer  satisfactorily  tne  second  ser- 
ies of  questions  of  test  four  in  the 
tenth  year.  The  child  must  reason 
and  use  his  judgment  in  certain  situ- 

ons  winch  the  examiner  reads  to 
him.  For  instance,  the  child  is  asked 
the  following  questions:  (1)  "Just 
29 


what  is  the  thing  to  do  if  you  were 
late  at  school  some  day?"  (2)  "What 
should  you  do  before  taking  part  in 
an  important  affair?"  (3)  "Why 
should  you  excuse  a  wrong  act  com- 
mitted in  anger  more  easily  than  a 
wrong  act  committed  without 
anger?"  (4)  "What  should  you  do 
when  asked  your  opinion  about  some 
one  whom  you  know  only  a  little?" 
(5)  "Why  ought  you  to  judge  a  man 
more  by  his  acts  than  by  his  words?" 
The  child  is  given  credit  if  he  ans- 
wers three  out  of  the  five  questions, 
but  very  few  were  able  to  answer 
even  three.  None  of  the  nine-year- 
old  children  were  able  to  answer  as 
many  as  three  of  these  and  twenty- 
four  out  of  the  forty-five  ten  year- 
old  people  failed  on  the  test  alto- 
gether. 

Memory. — The  inability  to  recall 
and  to  remember  the  little  incidents 
in  their  daily  life,  is  a  very  serious 
and  yet  a  common  defect  that  is  very 
often  met  with  in  a  deficient  child. 
The  chief  trouble  lies  in  the  fact  that 
a  child  does  not  concentrate  his  at- 

30 


tention  and  mind  on  any  one  thing, 
and  then  does  not  make  the  right  as- 
sociation later  when  he  wishes  to 
recall  some  fact. 

In  speaking  of  children  in  the  spe- 
cial school,  that  is  children  who  are 
mentally  behind  their  age  three  and 
four  years,  Tredgold  says:  i"The 
most  trifling  thing  serves  to  distract 
these  children  from  their  occupation, 
so  even  where  the  attention  is  read- 
ily gained,  it  is  with  difficulty  held. 
ny  of  them  become  capable  of  pur- 
suing a  congenial  task  with  a  certain 
amount  of  patience,  but  the  majority 
have  neither  power  of  concentration 
nor  will  sufficient  to  be  capable  of 
substantial  mental  effort  against  in- 
clination or  interposed  obstacles." 

The  table  at  the  end  of  chapter  7, 
shows  that  the  third  test  in  year  six 
was  missed  quite  often  by  children 
as  far  up  as  nine  years.  Three 
commands  are  given  to  the  child: 
"Put  the  key  on  the  chair."  "Shut 
the  door."  "Bring  me  the  box."  The 

1.  Mental  Deficiency:  "Feeble  Mindedness  in 
Children."     Page,  132. 

31 


accuracy  with  which  he  performs 
these  tasks  will  depend  upon  the 
comprehension  of  these  instructions 
and  his  ability  to  remember  all  of 
them  in  their  consecutive  order.  Two 
in  the  seventh  year  missed  it.  Two 
of  the  eight-year-olds  and  two  of  the 
nine-year-olds  were  also  unable  to 
carry  out  the  orders. 

Auditory  memory  of  these  children 
is  generally  poor,  according  to  my 
table,  as  shown  in  the  tests  of  repeat- 
ing five,  six  and  seven  numerals  in 
the  eighth,  tenth,  and  twelfth  years, 
respectively;  also  the  repeating  of 
sentences  with  ten  and  twenty-six 
syllables  in  years  five  and  twelve,  are 
tests  for  auditory  memory.  These 
seemed  very  difficult  for  the  chil- 
dren. For  instance,  in  the  repeating 
of  twenty-six  syllables,  no  child  in 
all  the  286  was  able  to  repeat  these 
correctly.  The  difficulty  of  this  test, 
however,  will  be  discussed  in  another 
chapter. 

We  are  able  to  get  a  line  on  the 
visual  memory  of  the  child  in  the 
second  test  of  year  ten,  m  which  the 

32 


child  is  asked  to  draw  two  designs 
from  memory  after  the  designs  have 
been  previously  exposed  for  ten  sec- 
onds. 

So,  the  basis  on  which  I  should 
classify  backward  children  is,  (1)  de- 
fective vision,  (2)  defective  reason- 
ing power,  and  (3)  defective  mem- 
ory power. 


III. 

A  COMPARISON  OF  THE  BOYS 
AND  GIRLS. 
The  boys  were  found  to  be  very 
much  more  enthusiastic  and  willing 
to  take  the  test  than  the  girls.  The 
majority  of  the  girls  seemed  slightly 
dubious  about  the  affair  and  were 
shy  until  we  got  on  intimate  terms  by 
means  of  conversation  which  was 
not  concerning  the  tests.  With  the 
larger  girls  it  was  necessary  to  use 
great  care  and  precaution  lest  they 
suspect  why  they  were  sent  in  for 
the  test  when  so  many  of  their  other 
schoolmates  did  not  have  to  take  it. 
The  object  was  to  deceive  the  child 
(especially  if  he  seemed  over  sen- 
sitive) into  thinking  that  the  tests 
were  meant  for  every  pupil  in  the 
school,  but  since  the  time  was  lim- 
ited, they  could  be  given  to  only 
about  half  of  the  school.  This  brief 
explanation  to  the  thirteen  or  four- 
34 


teen-year-old  girl  made  more  differ- 
ence than  one  would  imagine.  Her 
face  would  lighten  up  and  after  that 
she  took  more  interest  and  tried  to 
answer  every  question  to  the  best 
of  her  ability.  This  misrepresenta- 
tion seems  to  me  no't  only  legitimate, 
but  in  many  cases  almost  absolutely 
necessary.  The  examiner  wishes  to 
obtain  the  best  results  possible  from 
the  tests.  How  is  he  to  get  these  re- 
sults if  the  child  is  intimidated  or 
allowed  to  feel  that  he  or  she  has  been 
picked  out  from  among  his  classmates 
as  a  child  not  as  bright  as  his  fellow 
school  mates?  The  girl  is  naturally 
more  sensitive  than  the  boy,  so,  I 
maintain  that  one  will  always  be  re- 
warded with  better  results  if  pains 
are  taken  to  keep  the  real  purpose 
from  the  defective  girl.  Enough  care 
should  be  taken  with  the  boy,  but  the 
boy  is  a  different  proposition.  You 
have  not  the  shy,  subdued,  sensitive 
nature  to  deal  with  as  when  handling 
girls.  Just  as  the  healthy  normal  boy 
feels  himself  more  important  and  is 
more  confident  than  his  equally 
35 


normal  sister,  so  the  deficient  boy  has 
more  confidence  than  the  backward 
girl.  The  boy  does  not  then  need 
nearly  so  much  encouragement  as 
does  the  girl.  With  each  sex,  how- 
ever, the  more  praise  given  them  the 
better  the  results  obtained.  Praise 
the  girl  on  one  question  and  she  will 
try  all  the  harder  on  the  succeeding 
ones.  The  same  applies  in  like  man- 
ner to  the  boy.  By  the  close  of  the 
test  they  have  a  somewhat  exalted 
opinion  of  themselves,  because,  since 
they  have  been  praised  for  their  ans- 
wers, they  imagine  that  they  have 
passed  a  fine  examination.  But  do 
not  disturb  this  impression.  Aid 
them  in  every  conceivable  way  possi- 
ble to  gain  confidence,  a  thing  which 
children  of  their  type  lack.  Let  them 
at  least  strive  to  be  on  a  level  with 
their  fellow  schoolmates,  even  if  they 
are  sadly  lacking  in  strong  mental 
traits. 

The  backward  boys  outnumber  the 
girls.  Fifty-seven  per  cent,  of  the 
286  backward  children  were  boys  and 
only  forty-three  per  cent,  were  girls. 

36 


The  table  shows  that,  with  two  ex- 
ceptions, the  boys  outnumber  the 
girls  in  the  greatest  number  of  years 
retarded.  This  is  indicative  of  the 
fact  that  the  boys  who  were  tested 
are  actually  more  defective  or  that 
they  did  not  take  the  tests  seriously 
and  did  not  put  forth  the  best  pos- 
sible effort.  The  boys,  to  be  sure,  did 
not  appear  to  be  as  conscientious  dur- 
ing the  tests  as  the  girls,  and,  as  was 
stated  above,  this  may  have  been  the 
and  probably  was  the 
can  he  boys  measuring  lower 

in  the  scale  than  the  girls. 

Retardation  by  Years. 

Number  of  Years 

Retarded  Boys  Girls  Total 

1  year  retarded  42       44  86 

2  years   retarded  60       37  97 

3  years  retarded  34       28  62 

4  years   retarded  12         8  20 

5  years  retarded  12         8  20 

6  years   retarded       4         2         6 

7  years   retarded       4         0         4 

8  years   retarded       10         1 
10  years   retarded       10         1 

37 


In  general  I  observe  that  the  boys 
have  more  general  knowledge  than 
the  girls,  but  otherwise  in  the  tests, 
I  could  see  no  very  marked  differ- 
ence. In  testing  the  smaller  children 
up  to  the  fourth  grade,  they  seemed 
about  the  same  as  to  their  manner, 
behavior,  and  in  their  responses  in 
the  examination.  It  was  in  the  high- 
er grades  that  the  differences  be- 
tween the  sexes  appeared. 


IV. 

A  COMPARISON  BETWEEN  THE 

COLORED  AND  WHITE 

CHILDREN. 

The  colored  children  were  not  as 
free,  and  were  a  great  deal  more  shy 
than  the  white  children.  This,  I  con- 
cluded, was  partly  due  to  the  fact 
I  was  so  utterly  strange  to  them,  and 
not  being  of  their  race,  they  felt 
somewhat  constrained.  They  were 
ever  so  much  more  sensitive  than 
the  white  children.  They  imagined 
1  was  ready  to  make  fun  of  them  and 
laugh  at  their  little  mistakes.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  I  made  a  su- 
preme effort  to  put  myself  as  much 
as  possible  on  the  same  level  with 
them,  they,  nevertheless,  seemed  to 
have  the  feeling  that  I  was  their  su- 
perior. It  was  almost  an  impossi- 
bility to  enter  into  any  sort  of  friend- 
ly conversation  with  them,  and  for 
this  reason,  I  got  but  very  little  in- 
39 


sight  into  their  home  life.  The  white 
child,  on  the  other  hand,  needs  only 
one  question  to  get  him  started,  and 
without  further  inquiry  he  will  tell 
you  all  about  the  family,  the  neigh- 
bors, the  household  pets,  etc.  But 
not  so  with  our  little  negro  child.  If 
possible,  he  will  answer  wholly  in 
monosyllables  and  if  the  question  re- 
quires more  he  frames  his  answer  in 
the  fewest  words  possible.  With  a 
few  exceptions,  the  white  children 
entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  test  as 
if  it  were  some  game,  and  they  were 
enthusiastic  and  eager  for  the  next 
question.  But  the  colored  children 
rather  felt,  it  seemed  to  me,  that  J 
might  be  trying  to  catch  them  up  on 
some  question.  However,  in  ev 
case  they  answered  to  the  best  of 
their  ability  and  were  not  silent  at 
times  on  account  of  stubbornness. 
Owing  to  the  small  number  in  the 
colored  school,  compared  to  the  large 
number  of  other  children  in  our 
schools  it  is  not  exactly  fair  nor  is 
it  possible  to  draw  any  true       con- 


40 


elusions  as  to  the  likenesses  and  dif- 
ferences. 

There  is  one  thing,  however,  for 
which  1  can  commend  the  colored 
children,  and  that  is  their  behavior 
during  the  time  of  the  tests.  Al- 
though some  of  them  were  even  sul- 
len, and  not  exactly  prone  to  talk, 
yet  they  were  always  ready  to  help 
me  in  any  way  they  could.  If  my 
papers  blew  off  the  table,  the  little 
colored  child  was  right  after  them, 
replacing  them  on  the  table  and 
closing  the  window  without  my  tell- 
ing him  to  do  so.  The  white  child, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  to  be  told  to 
close  the  window,  or  if  I  suddenly 
lost  some  of  my  material  for  the 
test,  to  help  in  the  search  for  thp 
lost  article  never  occurred  to  him.  1 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  in 
the  matter  of  doing  things  for  him- 
self instead  of  depending  on  some 
one  else  to  do  it  for  him,  the  colored 
child  is  the  more  independent  of  the 
two.  Although  this  lack  of  independ- 
ence is  one  of  the  characteristics  of 
a  deficient  or  backward  child,  yet  it 

41 


is  not  so  true  of  the  colored  defective 
— so  far  as  I  could  discover.  The 
white  child  is  more  likely  to  be  spoil- 
ed and  petted  by  his  family  at  home, 
especially  if  he  is  weaker  generally 
than  his  brothers  and  sisters;  while 
the  little  colored  boy  "just  naturally 
grows  up." 

In  general,  the  drawings  made  by 
the  colored  children  were  much 
larger  arid  more  crude  than  in  the 
other  schools.  I  find  also  that  they 
do  not  seem  quite  as  careful  and 
painstaking  as  the  white  children. 


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I 


There  is  a  large  percentage  of  de- 
fective colored  children  than  white 
children.  Figures  show  that  only 
16.6  per  cent,  of  the  1,778  white  chil- 
ren  are  in  the  backward  class,  while 
there  is  43  per  cent,  of  the  90  pupils 
in  the  colored  school.  Another  dif- 
ference shown  by  the  table  is  that  a 
greater  percentage  of  the  colored 
children  come  in  the  class  of  the 
feeble-minded,  there  being  42.5  per 
cent,  and  only  37.8  per  cent,  of  the 
white  children.  Some  allowance 
should  be  made,  however,  concerning 
the  fact  mentioned  in  the  introduc- 
tion relative  to  the  testing  of  the 
eighth-grade  children.  Two  from 
this  grade  in  the  colored  school  were 
tested  and  only  a  few  of  the  eighth- 
B-grade  and  none  of  the  eighth-A- 
grade  were  tested  in  the  other  schools. 
However,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  are 
safe  in  saying  that  the  colored  child 
measures  lower  than  the  white  child. 


V. 

A  STUDY  OF  FAMILIES. 
It  was  not  possible,  on  account  of 
the  limited  time  to  go  into  many  of 
the  homes  to  see  for  myself  the  gen- 
eral conditions  of  the  home,  the  en- 
vironment, and  the  status  of  the 
family  itself.  But  in  general  I  found 
that  some  of  these  children,  a  very 
small  number,  however,  come  from 
homes  in  which  the  influence  and 
environment  are  excellent.  One 
could  but  wonder  just  why  these 
children  whose  parents  are  educated 
and  whose  home  conditions  are  good, 
were  sent  in  to  be  tested  as  subnor- 
mal children.  Upon  further  inves- 
tigation we  find  that  this  child 
whose  mother  and  father  are  intel- 
lectual and  who  help  and  encourage 
her  at  home,  had  a  severe  attack  of 
illness,  measles,  or  some  of  these 
other  "harmless"  diseases,  as  some 
ignorant  people  consider  them,  and 
45 


that  since  the  time  of  her  illness, 
her  brain  seemed  to  have  grown  and 
developed  more  slowly  than  her  body. 
What  is  there  to  do  in  a  case  of  this 
kind?  Nothing  but  what  these  sen- 
sible parents  are  doing,  that  is,  they 
are  helping  her  at  home  and  drilling 
her  on  the  lessons  which  she  could 
not  seem  to  get  in  the  required  length 
of  time  at  school.  In  short,  she  is 
having  to  spend  twice  as  much  time 
on  her  problems  as  the  ordinary 
child  spends. 

Among  the  286  children  who  were 
tested,  there  were  thirty-two  fami- 
lies having  two  or  more  children  in 
the  school  who  were  considered  and 
actually  measured  below  the  average 
normal  child.  Twenty-six  of  these 
thirty-two  families  had  two  defect- 
ive children  and  six  of  the  families 
had  three  defective  children. 

i  found  that  the  majority  of  the 
children  from  families  having  two 
or  more  of  their  children  in  the  sub- 
normal class,  were  in  this  condition 
partly  on  account  of  neglect.  I  have 
in  mind  a  family,  the  home  of  which 
46 


I  visted  often  two  years  ago  while 

I  had  M ,  the  oldest  girl,  in    my 

special  class  at  Central  school.     Of 
course  conditions    could    have    been 
worse,  but  they  were  anything  but 
pleasant  there  in  the  home.     These 
three      children,    who    were    nine, 
twelve,   and  fourteen  years  of  age, 
were  found  to  be  very  defective.  The 
oldest  girl  was  six  years  behind  her 
biological  age.  The  twelve  year-old- 
boy  measured  three  years  back,  and 
the  little    nine-year-old    girl    meas- 
ured     two    years    behind    her    bio- 
logical  age.    But  this   fact  is   not  at 
all  astonishing  when  one     takes     a 
peep  at  the  home  influence  and    en- 
vironment of  these  unfortunate  chil- 
dren,— the     mother     dead,     an     ig- 
norant,     hard-hearted     step-mother, 
with  two  of  her  own  babies  to  care 
for,  and    a  drunkard  for    a    father. 
They  received    absolutely    no    care, 
such  as  every  child  needs,  but  were 
simply  allowed  to  exist  and  to     get 
along  the  best  way  they  could.  They 
feared  their  father  as  they  would    a 
monster,  and  their  very  manner  of 
47 


fearing  and  cowering  plainly  show- 
ed the  kind  of  life  that  they  lived  at 
home.  Such  children  have  no  indi- 
vidualism for  the  very  simple  reason 
that  they  are  allowed  no  freedom  at 
home.  The  individual  is  thrust  into 
the  background  and  is  not  allowed  to 
manifest  itself.  Is  there  then  any 
wonder  that  these  children  lack  con- 
fidence and  initiative?  For  no  reason 
at  all  they  are  kept  from  school  by 
the  step-mother,  and  the  result  is  that 
they  advance  in  school  only  every 
two  or  three  years.  If  these  children 
could  be  taken  into  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent environment,  with  a  pleasant, 
helpful,  and  sympathetic  family, 
were  cared  for  in  the  proper  way, 
and  were  allowed  as  much  freedom 
as  necessary,  they  could  be,  1  be- 
lieve, put  on  the  level,  intellectually, 
with  that  of  their  average  school- 
mates. At  least  the  two  younger 
ones  could  be  made  more  nearly  nor- 
mal, but  there  might  be  some  doubt 
as  to  the  possibility  of  helping  the 
oldest  one  as  she  seems  to  be  a  type 
of  the  really  defective  child. 
48 


I  might  cite  any  number  of  such 
cases.  One  need  only  to  look  into  the 
faces  of  these  poor  little  neglected 
children  to  be  able  to  read  the  sorry 
story  of  their  lives.  Their  bad,  un- 
sanitary environment  is  reflected  in 
their  little  pale,  pinched  faces.  And 
a  few  questions  as  to  their  parents, 
brothers  and  sisters  would  usually 
verify  my  suppositions.  Another 
means  I  often  used  to  get  a  line  on 
their  home  conditions,  besides  mere- 
ly asking  questions,  was  the  use  of 
test  three,  in  year  eleven.  The  ex- 
aminer asks  the  child  to  say  as  many 
words  as  he  can  think  of  in  three 
minutes.  As  a  suggestion,  I  told 
them  to  name  some  of  the  common 
objects  in  their  home  or  around  the 
neighborhood  in  which  they  lived, 
and  after  he  has  named  several  such 
ol/jects  as,  wash-tub,  wash-board, 
clothes-pin,  tin  can,  pipe,  beer  bot- 
tle, etc.,  one  is  safe  in  guessing  about 
what  sort  of  a  family  he  comes  from, 
the  mother's  occupation,  and  the  en- 
vironment in  general.    It  is  easy  then 


49 


to  account  for  the  physical  and  men- 
tal condition  of  our  subject. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  meet  with 
children  whose  parents  are  on  the 
other  extreme, — parents  who  watch 
their  children  too  closely,  who  give 
them  too  much  care  and  attention, 
and  who  make  their  little  ailments 
seem  big  to  them.  Gradually  we  come 
to  see,  in  a  way,  that  over  indul- 
gence and  too  much  care  and  coddl- 
ing may  produce  the  same  sort  of 
child  as  we  find  in  the  degenerated 
environment.  He  does  not  take  the 
initiative  because  "mamma"  has 
always  done  it  for  him  at  home.  He 
does  not  study  hard  at  school,  for 
he  thinks  what  is  the  use,  "mamma" 
will  help  him  to  get  it  at  home.  He 
is  kept  out  of  school  every  other  day 
because  his  head  hurts  a  little  bit, 
and  his  mother  does  not  want  him  to 
over-work.  In  talking  with  the 
teachers  I  have  mentioned  such  and 
such  a  boy,  and  very  often  their  re- 
ply would  be,  "That  boy  would  have 
been  all  right  if  his  mother  had  not 
been  so  indulgent  with  him." 
50 


In  my  work  this  year,  I  had  a  case 
of  this  kind.  The  child  is  actually 
feeble-minded  and  her  present  bad 
condition  has  been  augmented  by 
the  over-indulgent  mother.  She  never 

gave  R a  chance  to  show  what 

she  could  and  might  do  alone.  With 
their  home  in  sight  of  the  school  she 
would  not  even  trust  her  ten-year- 
old  child  to  go  alone  a  distance  of 
about  two  ana  one-half  blocks.  In- 
stead of  teaching  and  helping  her 
by  assigning  her  little  tasks  to  do 
around  the  house,  the  mother  waits 
upon  her  herself,  never  giving  the 
child  a  chance  to  learn  by  experience. 
The  child  showed  clearly  the  influ- 
ence of  this  too-careful  mother.  I 
made  it  a  point  in  the  school  to  se- 
lect R to  do  many  errands,  and  it 

was  truly  pathetic  to  see  her  stumb- 
ling awkwardly  about  trying  to  per- 
form the  mission,  but  usually  failing 
sadly  in  the  satisfactory  performance 
of  the  task. 

For  my  own  satisfaction  I  ex- 
perimented with  her  to  see  if,  by 
diligently  working  with  her  daily, 
51 


she  could  be  taught  to  perform  well 
a  certain  task  and  how  long  it  would 
take  before  I  could  see  an  improve- 
ment.   The  first  few  weeks  of  school 

last  fall,  I  asked  R each  morning 

to  raise  the  window,  and  each  morn- 
ing it  was  always  the  same  reply,  "I 
can't."  I  showed  her  how  it  was  done, 
and  after  getting  a  chair  at  my  sug- 
gestion and  standing  on  it,  she  could 
raise  the  window  very  easily,  and  she 
was  usually  delighted  and  very  proud 
of  her  feat,  being  actually  surprised 
that  she  could  really  do  something. 
But  as  is  typical  of  her  class,  she 
was  not  able  to  apply  her  previous 
knowledge  to  the  next  day's  task, 
and  for  a  month  she  always  replied, 
"I  can't,"  upon  being  asked  to  raise 
the  window.  However,  after  a  long 
time,  she  came  to  realize  that  it  was 
possible  for  her  to  raise  that  window, 
and  I  finally  trained  her  to  perform 
the  task  as  well  as  any  one  could  have 
clone  it.  But  kindly  observe  the  time 
that  it  took  her  to  get  these  simple 
facts  ground  into  her  nervous  system 
sufficiently  to  apply  the  experience 
52 


of  yesterday  to  the  task  of  to-day.  A 
normal  child  needs  to  be  told 
only  once,  but  this  defective  girl 
had  to  be  told  exactly  twenty-three 
times  before  she  could  actually  per- 
form that  simple  little  task. 

If  parents  could  only  realize  what 
injury  they  are  doing  to  their  child 
by  over  indulgence !  But  most  of  them 
are  too  narrow,  weak,  and  ignorant 
to  see  that  their  apparent  kindness 
to  their  child  is  really  the  worst  sort 
of  unkindness.  There  should  be,  by 
all  means,  a  school  for  parents  where 
they  could  be  taught  how  to  bring 
up  children. 

The  defective  children  coming 
from  the  immoral  families  deserve  t& 
be  mentioned  in  this  general  survey 
of  families.  I  tested  two  subjects  of 
the  Runyan  tribe.  This  family  prob- 
ably contains  the  greatest  number  of 
imbeciles  and  feeble-minded  members 

of  any  family  in    the    city.     E 

aged  fourteen,  measured  nine  years 
mentally.  He  always  gave  one  the 
impression  that  he  had  been  guilty 
of  some  terrible  act,  for  he  always 
53 


looked  some  other  direction  when 
talking  to  any  one.  He  seemed  unable 
to  look  one  squarely  in  the  eye.  He 
did  not  lack  very  much  of  being  a 
moral  imbecile  of  the  very  worst 
type,  and  1  suppose  when  he  arrives 
at  the  age  when  he  can  stop  school 
that  he  will  join  the  rest  of  his  class 
of  paupers  and  criminals. 

Another  child  who  comes  from  one 
of  the  most  immoral  homes  in  the  city 

is  G ,  aged  twelve,     but     whose 

mental  age  is  seven.  She  was  one 
the  pupils  in  the  special  class  two 
years  ago.  At  that  time  she  was  ten 
years  old  and  still  in  the  l  B  grade, 
and  was  exceedingly  deficient.  She 
had  every  indication  of  being  a  moral 
imbecile,  if  not  at  that  time,  she 
gave  promise  of  developing  into  one 
at  a  later  age.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  imagine  a  worse  home  life 
than  hers.  The  family  is  both  pov- 
erty stricken     and     immoral,      and 

G is  following  in  the  foot-steps 

of  her  immoral  mother  and  sisters. 

Her  face  and  hands  are  never  clean, 

her  clothes  ragged  and  dirty.     Her 

54 


stature  is  far  below  the  average  child 
of  twelve.  She  has  a  little  head  with 
small,  slating  eyes,  and  a  large 
mouth.  Her  expression  is  blank  and 
stupid,  and  exceedingly  silly,  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  she  grins  almost 
constantly  or  laughs  at  nothing.  She 
is  nervous  and    flighty    and    never 

ms  to  be  able  to  concentrate  her 
thought  on  any  one  subject  for  any 
length  of  time.     There  is  no  doubt 

that  G has  directly  inherited  her 

feeble-mi ndedness  from  a  long  line 
of  ancestors.  Tredgold,  in  his  chap- 
ter on  "Intrinsic  and  Hereditary  In- 
fluences," saysi  "I  think,  therefore, 
that  it  cannot  be  questioned  that  the 
germinal  plasm  shares  in  those  alter- 
ations 01  the  bodily  protoplasm  which 
result  from  disease  and  environment. 
According  as  this  is  favorable  or  un- 

orable,  the  modification  will  be 
progressive  or  retrogressive;  conse- 
quently, each  individual  is  a  potent 
influence  for  good  or  ill  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  race.    The  environ- 


1.     Tredgold:  Mental    Deficiency,    Intrinsic    and 
Hereditary  Influences,  pages  36-37. 

55 


ment  of  to-day  will  become  the  hered- 
ity of  tomorrow,  and  the  statement 
that  the  sins  of  the  father  are  visit- 
ed upon  the  children  unto  the  third 
and  fourth  generations  is  an  undoubt- 
ed and  important  physiological 
truth."  I  am  unable  to  state  the  ex- 
act per  cent,  of  the  children  that  were 
tested,  who  came  from  immoral 
homes,  but  as  far  as  i  could  find 
out,  there  is  a  comparatively  small 
per  cent. 


VI. 
BACKWARDNESS    IN     GRADES. 

According  to  the  small  scale  on 
page  60,  the  grade  containing  the 
greatest  number  of  backward  chil- 
dren is  the  fourth,  which  has  58,  and 
the  fifth  grade  following  close  with 
51. 

After  carefully  considering  the 
problem  why  the  fourth  and  fifth 
grades  should  contain  more  backward 
children  than  any  of  the  other  grades, 
I  was  unable  to  come  to  any  definite 
conclusion.  The  age  may  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  matter,  how- 
ever. The  average  ages  for  these  chil- 
dren in  the  two  grades  are  between 
eleven  and  twelve  for  the  fourth 
grade  and  between  twelve  and  thir- 
teen for  the  fifth  grade.  A  child  at 
the  age  of  eleven,  twelve  or  thirteen 
is  at  that  awkward  stage  in  his  de- 
velopment. In  short  the  child  has 
reached  that  adolescent  age  when  the 
57 


physical  nature  and  the  body  are  un- 
dergoing a  great  change.  As  adoles- 
cence appears  later  in  boys  than  in 
girls,  this  applies  more  to  the  girls 
under  consideration.  The  body  is 
making  new  and  great  demands  on 
the  blood  supply,  to  help  in  its  great 
development.  The  result  is  that  the 
brain  must  suffer.  It  is  at  a  stand- 
still, so  to  speak,  while  the  body  is 
growing.  Another  significant  fact 
shown  by  the  table  is  the  small  num- 
ber of  defectives  in  the  sixth  grade 
compared  to  that  of  the  previous 
grades.  That  is  probably  accounted 
for  by  the  present  rule  concerning 
that  class  which  dislikes  school  and 
is  unable  to  cope  with  the  standards 
of  the  school.  The  rule  is  that  no 
child  is  allowed  to  stop  school  unless 
he  has  completed  the  fifth  grade. 
But  the  authorities  will  permit  him 
to  leave  sooner  if  he  has  reached  the 
fifteenth  year  of  his  age.  So  the 
small  number  possibly  is  due  to  the 
fact  that  a  great  many  deficient  chil- 
dren  have   taken   advantage   of  the 


58 


chance  to  leave  school  after  complet- 
ing the  fifth  year,  thereby  decreas- 
ing the  number  in  the  sixth  grade. 


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The  table  shows  the  fourth  grade 
to  contain  the  highest  number  of  de- 
fectives who  are  one  year  behind  their 
physiological  age.  The  seventh  grade 
contains  the  largest  number  which 
are  two  years  retarded.  The  fourth 
and  seventh  rank  equally  in  the  num- 
ber retarded  three  years.  The  fifth 
has  the  greatest  number  retarded 
four  years,  but  has  the  same  number 
as  the  first,  second  and  third  grades 
of  those  who  are  five  years  behind, 
and  contains  the  highest  number  six 
and  seven  years  retarded.  The  third 
grade  holds  the  record  for  having 
the  only  two  children  who  are  retard- 
ed eight  and  ten  years  respectively. 
(The  records  of  those  retarded  eight 
and  ten  years  are  not  accurate,  since 
those  children  should  have  been  giv- 
en the  adult  test,  but  it  has  not  prov- 
ed as  efficient  as  the  other  tests 
and  is  therefore  not  standardized  as 
are  the  others.) 

Here  again,  according  to  the  table, 
we  find  the  fourth  and  fifth  grades 
containing  not  only  the  largest  num- 
ber of  defectives  in  general,  but  also 
61 


the  largest  numbers  which  are  re- 
tarded one,  three,  four,  five,  six  and 
seven  years. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  at  what 
age  there  is  the  greatest  number  of 
this  slow  class  in  the  schools.  The 
following  table  shows  that  we  find  58 
ten-year-old  children,  46  eleven-year- 
old,  and  39  thirteen-year-old. 


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VII. 
SUMMARY. 

In  the  1908  L'Annee  Psychology 
que  in  M.  Binet's  article  on  his  esti- 
mate and  interpretation  of  his  scale 
he  says,  "The  result  of  the  tests  de- 
pend upon  (1)  intelligence,  pure  and 
simple;  (2)  school  knowledge  which 
may  be  acquired  earlier  than  the 
usual  age,  (3)  school  knowledge  that 
cannot  be  acquired  before  the  usual 
age,  (4)  knowledge  involving  lan- 
guage and  vocabulary,  belonging  un- 
der both  two  and  three  and  depending 
partly  upon  the  school  and  partly  up- 
on the  general  surroundings."  So 
according  to  these  interpretations,  we 
find  by  carefully  examining  and 
working  over  the  scale  that  the 
knowledge  of  different  parts  of  the 
body,  knowing  sex,  arrangement  of 
weights,  definitions  superior  to  use, 
definitions  of  the  three  abstract 
terms,  giving  sixty  words  in     three 


minutes,  interpretation  of  pictures, 
and  changing  the  hands  of  the  clock, 
all  come  under  one.  The  intelligence, 
pure  and  simple,  under  the  classifi- 
cation two,  are  those  questions  which 
test  the  child's  knowledge  of  colors, 
of  common  objects,  and  ability  to 
name  the  days  of  the  week  and  the 
months  of  the  year.  The  ability  to 
count  backward  from  20  to  0,  to 
change  money,  to  count  stamps,  to 
make  original  sentences  containing 
three  given  words,  to  put  dissected 
sentences  together,  to  give  three 
rhymes  with  each  of  the  three  given 
words,  and  to  answer  the  series  of 
questions  which  involve  reasoning, 
all  would  depend  upon  results  three 
and  four. 

In  the  same  chapter  mentioned 
jabovei,  Binet  makes  a  distinction  be- 
tween two  kinds  of  intelligence,  the 
maturity  of  intelligence  and  the  ac- 
curacy of  intelligence.  "An  intelli- 
gence which  is  not  ripe  is  an  infan- 
tile intelligence;  an  intelligence  that 
is    ripe  before    its    time    is    called 

1.     L'  Annee  Psychologique,  1909. 

65 


precocious.  Maturity  consists,  in 
part,  in  a  development  of  the  abilities 
of  comprehension  and  judgment;  at 
least,  that  is  possible,  a  child  compre- 
hends less  and  judges  with  less  pene- 
tration than  an  adult ;  it  consists  also 
in  tlie  increase  of  the  bulk  of  ac- 
quisitions of  all  sorts — the  child  has 
less  experience,  it  knows  less  than 
the  adult.  *  *  *  *  We  believe  the  ma- 
turity of  intelligence  is  brought  out 
by  three  or  four  tt  ;:  These 

tests  are  definitions,  descriptions  of 
pictures,  construction  of  a  sentence 
containing  three  given  words,  and, 
perhaps,  also  the  arrangement  of 
weights.  *  *  *  *  It  is  easy  to  see  of 
what  the  infantile  turn  of  thought 
consists.  In  definitions,  it  is  the 
utilitarian  point  of  view,  the  idea 
of  the  self  is  not  lost  and  the  objects 
are  imagined  in  their  relation  to 
the  person ;  in  description  of  pictures, 
it  is  in  enumeration,  instead  of  recog- 
nition of  the  relation  of  things;  in 
the  construction  of  sentences,  it  is  in 
the  production  of  three  different 
ideas;  *  *  *  *  in  the  comparison  of 
66 


weights,  it  is  somewhat  analogous; 
the  contrast  between  the  difficulty  of 
comprehending  and  retaining  the  idea 
that  the  blocks  are  to  be  arranged  in 
the  order  of  weight  and  the  facility 
of  comparing  one  with  another. 
These  are  some  of  the  traits  of  infan- 
tile intelligence." 

According  to  the  classification  of 
M.  Binet,  I  find  by  looking  over  the 
records  of  the  286  children  who  were 
tested,  that  a  great  majority  of  the 
older  ones  whose  intelligence  should 
be  mature  intelligence  according  to 
their  age,  are  decidedly  the  type  with 
the  infantile  intelligence.  When  we 
find  a  boy  whose  age  is  sixteen  years, 
but  who  we  learn  by  testing,  cannot 
name  the  four  colors  which  we  place 
before  him,  who  does  not  know  a  two 
cent  stamp  from  a  one  cent  stamp, 
and  who  cannot  even  name  the 
months  of  the  year,  surely  he  has 
only  infantile  intelligence;  although, 
according  to  his  age,  his  intelligence 
should  be  mature. 

The  great  number  of  children  who 
missed  question  two  in  year  nine, 
67 


proves  that  point  which  Binet  makes 
concerning  the  point  of  view  the 
child  takes  in  giving  these  defi- 
nitions. From  the  table  we  find  that 
of  the  eight-year-old  children,  not 
one  was  able  to  give  any  better  defi- 
nitions than  those  of  use.  Of  the 
nine-year-old  group,  only  five  de- 
fined the  objects  in  terms  superior 
to  use,  while  twenty-two  failed  entire- 
ly. I  varied  my  questions  in  every 
way  I  could  possibly  think  of  in 
order  to  get  the  child  to  tell  ji 
how  a  table  was  made,  what  a  chair 
looked  like,  what  it  was  made  of,  etc., 
but  he  seemed  to  be  able  to  think  oi 
these  objects  only  from  his  own  point 
of  view,  namely,  not  of  what  these 
articles  are  made,  but  of  what  serv- 
ice they  were  to  him  and  how  he  used 
them. 

According  to  my  table,  there  are 
two  tests  that  seem  to  be  too  easy  and 
should  be  set  back  a  year  or  so  in 
the  scale.  The  first  test  in  year  six, 
in  which  the  child  was  asked  to  state 
whether  it  was  morning  or  afternoon, 
proved  very  easy  for  most  of  the 
68 


children  who  were  given  the  six-year- 
old  test.  The  two  six-year-old  chil- 
dren answered  it  correctly,  as  did 
all  of  the  seven-year-olds,  and  only 
one  eight-year-old  failed.  The  other 
is  test  one,  in  year  ten.  We  show  the 
subject  a  penny,  a  nickel,  a  dime,  a 
quarter,  a  half-dollar,  and  a  two,  a 
five,  and  a  ten  dollar  bill.  I  followed 
carefully  Dr.  Goddard's  suggestions 
on  this  point  in  his  revised  method. 
He  makes  the  suggestion  that  since 
our  coins  above  fifty  cents  are  so 
rarely  seen  by  children  that  we  should 
show  coins  up  to  the  dollar,  but  not  in 
their  order.  He  says  that  the  child 
may  name  the  paper  money  from 
memory,  and  if  he  tells  you  that  he 
has  seen  a  three  or  a  four-dollar  bill, 
then  you  are  pretty  safe  in  judging 
that  he  does  not  know  much  about 
paper  money.  I  followed  these  in- 
structions and  found  that  only  two 
out  of  the  ten  in  their  ninth  year 
did  not  know  the  different  coins, 
while  every  one  of  the  ten,  eleven, 
and  on  up  through  the  sixteen-year- 


69 


old  children  knew  all  of  the  differ- 
ent pieces  of  money. 

So  it  stands  to  reason  that  if  these 
two  tests  seem  easy  for  the  back- 
ward child,  it  is  very  good  proof  that 
they  would  be  far  too  easy  for  the 
normal  child. 

The  third  test  in  year  twelve  is 
entirely  too  difficult.  Among  the  286 
children,  there  was  not  one  child  who 
was  able  to  repeat  the  given  sentence 
correctly.  The  sentence  reads,  "I 
saw  in  the  street  a  pretty  little  dog. 
He  had  curly  brown  hair,  short  legs, 
and  a  long  tail."  Not  even  were  they 
able  to  reproduce  the  sentence  with 
no  more  errors  than  one  omission  and 
one  transposition.  According  to  Dr. 
Goddard's  manual,  the  child  should 
be  given  credit  if  he  made  no  other 
errors  than  those  mentioned. 

Aside  from  these  three  tests  the 
scale  is  well  arranged  and  the  ques- 
tions are  well  suited  to  the  age  for 
which  they  are  designed. 

Terman,  in  giving  his  impression 
of  the  Binet  Scale  after  he  himself 
had  tested  ninety  children  and  had 
.     70 


supervised  the  testing  of  four  hun- 
dred, said i  "However,  in  spite  of  the 
many  imperfections  and  inadequacies 
of  the  revised  scale,  I  believe  that 
by  its  use  it  is  possible  for  the 
psychologist  to  submit,  after  a  forty 
minute  diagnostication,  a  more  relia- 
ble and  a  more  enlightening  estimate 
of  the  child's  intelligence  than  most 
teachers  can  after  a  year  of  daily 
contact  in  the  school-room." 

In  the  above  tables  of  the  sum- 
mary of  the  tests,  the  vertical  column 
of  figures  on  the  left  refers  to  the 
number  of  the  questions  as  given  in 
Goddard's  revision  of  the  tests;  the 
horizontal  row  of  figures,  under 
"Chronological  Ages"  at  the  top  of 
tables  refers  to  the  chronological 
ages  of  the  children  tested; 
the  letters  "R"  and  "W"  refer  to  the 
answers  to  the  questions  made  by 
the  children  of  the  respective  ages 
and  grades,  "R,"  indicating  the  right 

1.  Article  by  Dr.  Edward  B.  Huey  on  the 
Present  Status  of  the  Binet  Scale  of  Tests  for 
the  Measurement  of  Intelligence.— Psychological 
Clinic,  1911. 

71 


answer,  and  "W,"  indiciating  wrong 
answer. 


M.  Binet's  Method  for  the  Meas- 
urement of  Intelligence Some  Re- 
sults— Katherine  L.  Johnson — 
Journal  of  Experimental  Pedagogy, 
1911. 

The  Present  Status  of  the    Binet 
Scale  of  tests  for  the  Measuring  of  In- 
telligence,— Edward  B.  Huey,     Psy- 
chological Bulletin,  1912. 

The  Present  Status  of  the  Binev 
and  Simon  Tests  of  the  Intelligence  of 
Children, — F.  Kuhlmann,  Journal  of 
Psycho-Asthenics,  1912. 

The  Binet-Simon  Scale  for  Meas- 
uring Intelligence, — Impressions 
gained  by  its  application  upon  four 
hundred  non-selected  children, — 
Lewis  M.  Terman,  Psychological 
Clinic,  1911. 

A  Study  of  the  Binet  Definition 
Tests, — Isabel  Lawrence,  Psycholo- 
logical  Clinic,  1911. 

The  Binet-Simon  Scale  and  the 
Psychologist, — Clara  Harrison  Town, 
Psychological  Clinic,  1911. 

Four  Hundred  Feeble-minded  Chil- 
dren Classified  by  the  Binet  Method, 

74 


— H.  Goddard,  Journal    of    Psycho- 
Asthenics. 

The  Binet-Simon  Tests,— C.  E. 
Seashore, — Journal  of  Educational 
Psychology,  1912. 


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